Being data-driven and avoiding a distorted view of reality

After some tests in which people scored very badly (even worse than chimpanzee would have done, choosing randomly responses), the author got to the conclusion that only actively wrong knowledge could lead us to answers like that (not missing knowledge).

People have an old dated worldview, to the time when their teachers had left school, but that is not the only problem going on, as they misinterpret the facts even when they are right there in front. This happens probably because our brains often jump to swift conclusions without much thinking (which used to help us to avoid immediate dangers thousands of years ago, but we live in a very different world now). This quick-thinking brains and cravings for drama — our dramatic instincts — are causing misconceptions and this overdramatic “fake” worldview. To fight this illusion, we need to build a worldview based on facts.

The Gap Instinct

The gap instinct is that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups. We love to dichotomise, good versus bad, and this completely distorts all the global proportions in our minds. Example: The world used to be divided into two, but isn’t any longer. Low-income countries are much more developed than most people think and vastly fewer people live in them. The idea of a divided world with a majority stuck in misery and deprivation is an illusion, as today, most people are in the middle. What we should do is stop dividing countries into two groups and start to divide them in four levels i.e, depending on their daily income:

Often it takes several generations for a family to move from Level 1 to Level 4. Just 200 years ago, 85 percent of the world population was still on Level 1, in extreme poverty. Today, 1B lives still on level 1, 3B on level 2, 2B on level 3 and 1B on level 4. So, the majority of the world population is in the middle.

There are three common warning signs that someone might be telling you (or you might be telling yourself) an overdramatic gap story and triggering your gap instinct:

Comparisons of Averages

Averages mislead by hiding a spread (a range of different numbers) in a single number. When we compare two averages, we risk misleading ourselves even more by focusing on the gap between those two single numbers, and missing the overlapping spreads. We almost always get a more accurate picture by digging a little deeper and looking not just at the averages but at the spread: not just the group all bundled together, but the individuals. Then we often see that apparently distinct groups are in fact very much overlapping. Example: people living in USA have an higher average income over time than people living in Mexico, and the first graph show us that there is a gap between them; however if we look into the spread in a particular year we can see that there is a partial overlap between both incomes, there is no real gap.

Comparisons of Extremes

In all groups, of countries or people, there are some at the top and some at the bottom. The difference is sometimes extremely unfair. But even then, the majority is usually somewhere in between, right where the gap is supposed to be.The extremes exists, but don’t tell us much and the majority tells a very different story. Example: the richest 10% in Brazil earns 41% of the total income; we quickly imagine an elite stealing resources from all the rest and the media support this. Yes, the number is high but it has being reducing in the last years, and, on the other side, most people in Brazil left extreme poverty; most people are in the middle.

The View from Up Here

Remember, looking down from above distorts the view; everything else looks equally short, but it’s not. Anyone who has looked down from the top of a tall building knows that it is difficult to assess from there the differences in height of the buildings nearer the ground, even if they are big. Example: A level 4 may think that the rest of the levels look equally por, but for the people living on the ground on Levels 1, 2, and 3, the distinctions are crucial

The Negativity Instinct

The loss of hope is probably the most devastating consequence of the negativity instinct and the ignorance it causes. For some reason, there is an inability of older people that avoid them reminding themselves and their children about the miseries and brutalities of the past. They have romanticised their youths and insisted that things ain’t what they used to be. So, be careful: Objects in your memories were worse than they appear. On the other side, it is easy to be aware of all the bad things happening in the world and it’s harder to know about the good things: billions of improvements are never reported. The news constantly alerts us to bad events in the present. Keep in mind that the positive changes may be more common, but they don’t find you. You need to find them. (And if you look in the statistics, they are everywhere.).

This misconception that the world is getting worse is very difficult to maintain when we put the present in its historical context. Over the last 200 years, in fact almost every country has improved by almost every measure. Example: extreme poverty rate has been falling since 1800; just 20 years ago, 29 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty and now that number is 9 percent.

To control the negativity instinct:

• Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g., better). Things can be both bad and better.
• Good news is not news and it is almost never reported. When you see bad news, ask whether equally positive news would have reached you.
• Gradual improvement is not news. When a trend is gradually improving, with periodic dips, you are more likely to notice the dips than the overall improvement.
• More news does not equal more suffering. More bad news is sometimes due to better surveillance of suffering, not a worsening world.
• Beware of rosy pasts. People often glorify their early experiences, and nations often glorify their histories.

The Straight Line Instinct

Automatic visual forecasting helped our ancestor survive but is not always a reliable guide in modern life. The best way of controlling the instinct to always see straight lines — whether in relation to population growth or in other situations — is simply to remember that such lines are rare in reality and that curves naturally come in lots of different shapes. Many trends do not follow straight lines but are S-bends, slides, humps, or doubling lines. Example: human population increased slowly for almost 10.000 years, but things happened in the year 1800 (as industrial revolution → death rate fell) and started increasing at a very high speed.

The world population today is 7.6B and the growth started slow down; the UN prediction is that in 2100 there will be 11B people

The explanation of why children population stopped growing it has to be with the babies per woman during the last decades; as million of people left extreme poverty, most of them decided to have fewer children (no more child labor or insurance again child mortality needed, they wanted better education, etc.).

So, the increment main reason is there will be more adults (> 15 yo). And finally, after some generations, the fast growth stops:

The Fear Instinct

There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear, as when we are afraid, we do not see clearly. The world seems scarier than it is because what you hear about it has been selected — by your own attention filter or by the media — precisely because it is scary. The media cannot resist tapping into our fear instinct because it an easy way to grab our attention; but the next time remember this positive long-term trend:

When you are afraid, you see the world differently. Make as few decisions as possible until the panic has subsided. Recognize when frightening things get your attention, and remember that these are not necessarily the most risky. Our natural fears of violence, captivity, and contamination make us systematically overestimate these risks. To control the fear instinct, calculate the risks (Risk = danger × exposure). The risk something poses to you depends not on how scared it makes you feel, but on a combination of two things. How dangerous is it and how much are you exposed to it. Example: Since mid 40s every plane crash has been investigated and lot of procedures have been improved. In 2016 only 0.000025% of the flights ended in fatal incidents (10 of 40 millions); however journalist only write about the deaths because are the newsworthy and may trigger our fear instinct.

The Size Instinct

The world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone. It is instinctive to look at a lonely number and misjudge its importance. It is also instinctive to misjudge the importance of a single instance or an identifiable victim.

Recognise when a lonely number seems impressive (small or large), and remember that you could get the opposite impression if it were compared. Always look for comparisons. For getting things in proportion you need only two magic tools: comparing and dividing. Often the best thing we can do to make a large number more meaningful is to divide it by a total. Amounts and rates can tell very different stories. Rates are more meaningful, especially when comparing between different-sized groups. In particular, look for rates per person when comparing between countries or regions. Example: UNICEF reported 4.2 million babies died in 2016. Even it’s a big number, it is not huge compared with 1950, when it was 14.4 millions (10x).

We can understand the world better and make better decisions if we known where the biggest proportion of population live now and where will live in the future: Today more than 50% of the world population lives in Asia and by 2100 probably more than 80% will live in Asia and Africa.

The Generalisation Instinct

Categories are absolutely necessary for us to function. They give structure to our thoughts. Imagine if we saw every item and every scenario as truly unique — we would not even have a language to describe the world around us. Like all the other instincts in this book, can also distort our worldview. When people become aware of this, it is called a stereotypes.

Recognize when a category is being used in an explanation, and remember that categories can be misleading. We can’t stop generalization and we shouldn’t even try. What we should try to do is to avoid generalizing incorrectly. To control the generalization instinct, question your categories:

• Look for differences within groups. Especially when the groups are large, look for ways to split them into smaller, more precise categories (example: we divided developed and undeveloped countries into the 4 levels by income described in “The Gap Instinct” section)
• Look for similarities across groups. If you find striking similarities between different groups, consider whether your categories are relevant.
• Look for differences across groups. Do not assume that what applies for one group (e.g., you and other people living on Level 4) applies for another (e.g., people not living on Level 4).
• Beware of “the majority.” The majority just means more than half. Ask whether it means 51 percent, 99 percent, or something in between.
• Beware of vivid examples. Vivid images are easier to recall but they might be the exception rather than the rule.
• Assume people are not idiots. When something looks strange, be curious and humble, and think, In what way is this a smart solution?

The Destiny Instinct

Instinct is the idea that innate characteristics determine the destinies of people, countries, religions, or cultures, inescapable reasons. Historically, humans lived in surroundings that didn’t change much. Assuming they would continue to work that way rather than constantly reevaluating was probably an excellent survival strategy. But, today, this instinct linds us to the revolutionary transformations in societies happening all around us.

Nations, and people are not rocks; they are in constant transformation, but it happens just a bit too slowly to be noticeable. Example: The idea that Africa is destined to remain poor. Africa can catch up. First of all, not all African countries are lagging the world, as the north coast of Africa; they are where Sweden was in 1970. Most of the rest, still live in extreme poverty, yes, as Sweden 90 years ago, but making incredible progress i.e reducing its child mortality even faster than Europe did.

Values change all the time as cultures does, they are not unchangeable!. Example: The macho values that are found today in many Asian and African countries, are patriarchal values, like those found in Sweden only 60 years ago, and with social and economic progress they may vanish, just as they did in Sweden.

So, to control the destiny instinct:

• Don’t confuse slow change with no change.
• Be prepared to update your knowledge. The most basic knowledge goes off very quickly. Stay open to new data.
• Talk to Grandpa: try comparing your own with those of your parents. You will almost certainly see radical change.
• Collect examples of cultural change

The Single Perspective Instinct

We find simple ideas very attractive and we enjoy feeling we really understand or know something, having a single solution for complex problems. There is no single indicator through which we can measure the progress of a nation. Reality is just more complicated than that. It saves a lot of time to think like this but makes you blind to information that doesn’t fit your perspective.

Example: The communist system in Cuba is an example of the danger of getting hooked on a single perspective: the seemingly reasonable but actually bizarre idea that a central government can solve all its people’s problems. The Cuban minister had described things from the government’s single-minded perspective: Cuba is the healthiest of the poor, but there was also another way of looking at things. Why be pleased with being the healthiest of the poor? Don’t the Cuban people deserve to be as rich, and as free, as those in other healthy states? On the other hand, the health-care system in the United States is also suffering from the single-perspective mind-set: the seemingly reasonable but actually bizarre idea that the market can solve all a nation’s problems. USA is the sickest of the rich (39 countries have longer life expectancies.), even they spend more per capita on health care than any other country in the world.

Example II: Even democracy is the single solution. Of the ten countries with the fastest economic growth in 2016, nine of them score low on democracy.

To control this instinct, constantly test your favorite ideas for weaknesses, seeing and talking with people who contradict you. Remember that experts are experts only within their own field and sometimes “experts” are not experts even in their own fields. Great knowledge can interfere with an expert’s ability to see what actually works (“give a child a hammer and everything looks like a nail”). Numbers are not the single solution, neither is medicine or any ideology (they can become just as fixated as experts and activists on their one idea or one solution). Welcome complexity and combine ideas. The answer is not either/or. It is case-by-case, and it is both.

The Blame Instinct

The blame instinct is the instinct to find a clear, simple reason for why something bad has happened. it comes very naturally for us to decide that when things go wrong, it must be because of some bad individual with bad intentions, because someone wanted; otherwise, the world feels unpredictable, confusing, and frightening. This steals our focus and prevents us from focusing our energy in the right places. Same instinct is triggered when things go well.

We tend to look for guys who confirm our existing beliefs; look beyond a guilty individual and to the system. We have an instinct to find someone to blame, but we rarely look in the mirror. Finding someone to blame can distract us from looking at the whole system and drives us to attribute more power and influence to individuals than they deserve,. Example: Smart and kind people often fail to reach the terrible, guilt-inducing conclusion that our own immigration policies are responsible for the drownings of refugees.

Recognise when a scapegoat is being used. Look for causes, not villains and accept that bad things can happen without anyone intending them to. Look for systems, not heroes; give the system some credit.

The Urgency Instinct

When we are afraid and under time pressure and thinking of worst-case scenarios, we tend to make really stupid decisions. Our ability to think analytically can be overwhelmed because the call to action makes us think less critically. This must have served us humans well in the distant past, but now we have eliminated most immediate dangers.

We do not seem to have a similar instinct to act when faced with risks that are far off in the future and that is a big problem for activists. How can they wake us up? Very often, it is by convincing us that an uncertain future risk is actually a sure immediate risk. Exaggeration, once discovered, makes people tune out altogether. Example: Fear of pandemic plus the panic of urgency made the author close the road and cause the drownings of all mothers, children, and fishermen.

Weather forecasts are rarely accurate more than a week into the future. Forecasting a country’s economic growth and unemployment rates is also surprisingly difficult. We should not pick the most dramatic estimates and show a worst-case scenario as if it were certain. Climate activists often think that invoking fear and urgency with exaggerated or unsupported claims is justified because it is the only way to get people to act on future risks.

Recognise when a decision feels urgent and remember that it rarely is. Take a breath when your urgency instinct is triggered. Solve problems by taking action but have a serious data set so you can track your progress. Sometimes the most useful action you can take is to improve the data. Only relevant and accurate data is useful. Act on the data, not on instinct to worry about the right thing. Beware of fortune-tellers and ignore the noise, but keep an eye on the big risks; insist on a full range of scenarios, never just the best or worst case.